OPINION
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 26, 2005
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
EDITORIAL BOARD
www.kansan.com
U.S. government, Church should favor "wrapping it"
Controversy sprung out of the Catholic church in Spain last week, as Juan Antonio Martinez Camino, spokesman for the Spanish Bishops Conference told reporters that "Condoms have a place in the global prevention of AIDS." Because condoms go against religious beliefs, Catholics around the world were enraged. The church hierarchy later proclaimed that no changes had been made in the church doctrine.
It will be feverishly debated whether this is hypocrisy on the part of the church or a step forward in the fight against AIDS. More importantly though, Americans need to take a look at the big picture and answer a question about sexuality in our own lives: Are we being realistic with the way we educate our children about sex?
The commotion coming out of Spain affects everyone, including those outside the Catholic church. Martinez Camino admitted that the sexual climate in the world is a dangerous one, and that changes need to be made. The Catholic church is essentially going against its own stance on an important issue.
The answer, quite simply, is no. According to a 2002 report in Newsweek, more than one third of U.S. high schools teach an abstinence-only curriculum. Congress recently passed a bill allotting $131 million for abstinence-only education, nearly $60 million more than in 1998.
It's a policy that President Bush brought with him from his days as governor of Texas. During his tenure in the Longhorn state, Texas ranked last in the country in the decline of pregnancies for girls ages 15 to 17-years old.
This comes from the Union of Concerned Scientists, a coalition that supports a more comprehensive sexual education curriculum. This would mean classes that promote abstinence as a first option, but also educate students on protecting themselves if they choose to become sexually active.
The Newsweek report claimed that groups like the Sexuality Information and Education Council (SIECUS) support the more well-rounded approach to sexual education, and with good reason.
The Catholic church's change of opinion admits that people are engaging in out-of-wedlock sexual action. As long as this is happening, there might as well be action to make the action safer. It is not productive for President Bush and his administration to pretend that telling kids not to have sex is proper education and then send them out into the world to figure out the dangers on their own.
The driving force behind abstinence only education is religious fervor. By blocking students' rights to education regarding so-called "safe-sex" alternatives, the government is forcing their own family values onto students. Where are children from single-family homes supposed to side on the issue of waiting until marriage for sex? And for homosexuals who aren't able to legally marry? These kinds of exclusions do not occur in a more balanced curriculum, where everyone is given the same facts and allowed to make their own decision.
Instead, our own leaders should want teens to be knowledgeable and safe, not naive and at risk.
The government cannot control whether or not teens are having sex. But as long as they are funding education to protect the health of teens, it is their responsibility to do the most effective job possible. Remaining abstinent is obviously the safest measure against HIV, but at least one group has decided it's not reality to assume everyone will do so. Our government should follow the trend.
Erick Schmidt writing for the editorial board.
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team got spanked, while the women's team beat Missouri and didn't get on the front page.
team got spanked, while the women's team beat Missouri and didn't get on the front page.
There's nothing better than free meals on Sundays at Buffalo Wild Wings.
life, Karzai had worked as a consultant for the oil company Unocal, which, prior to Sept. 11, was in talks with the Taliban to construct a Central Asian gas pipeline.
This just in: John and Ryan just went out on a date with Brigitte Nielsen and nearly were assaulted by Flavor Flav.
I find it kinda funny that the men's basketball
I feel really well educated when my speech teacher spills "soldiers" s-o-i-l-e-r-s.
If you're tired of all the Bush-bashing, move out of Lawrence, the most liberal town in Kansas.
Who do you have to screw to get your quote in the Free For All?
图
The KU Bookstore is the worst run bookstore in the entire country.
My first love was pepparoni pizza. My second was Marvelln.
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Wake Bush up from delusional dream
Dear George W. Bush.
CORPORATOCRACY
As you begin your second and final term, I have a few words of advice:
Do yourself. Mr. President
Be yourself, Mr. President.
With 51 percent of the popular vote,
you have nothing left to prove. So will
the real Slim Shady please stand up?
First, stop pretending you support the troops. On Oct. 2, 2002, Air Force Magazine reported that your administration opposed a Senate addition to the Iraq supplemental bill that would have added $1.3 billion to veterans' health care. As your ill-fated war in Iraq births a new generation of amputees abroad, tax cuts to the rich funnel away public trust at home. Veterans' hospitals in New York, Pittsburgh, Kentucky, Ohio, Mississippi, California and your home state of Texas have closed since you pushed your unaffordable tax cuts.
Stop pretending you have a divine mission to "spread freedom." Do you mean the freedom to torture in Abu Ghaib Prison? To where is this freedom spreading, exactly?
STEHPEN SHUPE
opinion@kansan.com
Stop pretending the election in Afghanistan was a triumph for democracy. In October of 2004, the war-ruined country of Afghanistan "elected" Hamid Karzai to serve as its president.
My favorite fact about Karzai: When you appointed him to serve as the interim president of Afghanistan on Dec. 31, 2001, he stacked his government — a government you openly supported — with the country's mujahdeen warlords. These same warlords massacred 40,000 civilians in Kabul between 1992 and 1994, laying waste to the country's economy and making waste for the Taliban.
My second favorite fact: In his past
W
What did your administration have to gain by appointing Karzai interim president? We know that Enron stood to benefit from the pipeline project's fruition. Donald Rumsfeld and trade representative Robert Zoellick held stock in the company. Oh, and another chief benefactor was Halliburton, Dick Cheney's old stomping ground.
In a blistering series of reports written for the online version of the Nation magazine, the journalist Christian Parenti exposed the October election as "a farce" that was "besieged by a wave of fraud and technical errors." With no system to verify the identity of voters, pre-registration soared. So high, in fact, that in the four provinces along Afghanistan's eastern border, 140 percent of the adult population was registered to vote. In Khost, warlords told the elders there that if they failed to vote for Karzai their homes would be burned to the ground. On election day, the proliferation of fake voting cards meant people were able to vote multiple times. Karzai's opponents
A pipeline deal was signed two years into Karzai's interim presidency. The mujahedeen thugs still make up the Karzai government. Still, you say freedom is on the march. Is freedom code for corporate domination?
renounced his election as illegitimate.
Parenti wrote: "In short, there is no rule of law in Afghanistan, and there is no security, so there can be no free and fair election."
Which brings us to Iraq. Stop pretending America's Mesopotamian misadventure is part of the so-called war on terror. Rolling Stone reported in November that as much as 85 percent of the Iraqi population supports the resistance. Are they all terrorists? Ordinary citizens as well as trained fighters now make up the estimated 200,000 insurgents, with 40,000 involved in hardcore fighting and the rest providing direct support.
"We fight with our friends and brothers, and every day we lose, but we continue to fight because this is our country," a young fighter in Moqtaq al-Sadr's now-disbanded Mahdi Army told Rolling Stone. "We cannot accept that foreigners will occupy our land — that is our belief. We believe that we are right."
The election is over, Mr. President. Time to take off that cowboy hat and brush off your Wall Street duds.
Yours truly,
Stephen.
Shupe is an Augusta graduate student in journalism. His radio show, "Visual Happenings," airs at 9 on Thursday nights on 90.7-KJHK.
Poor funding sacrifices education
COMMENTARY
One of the most important parts of children's development is the quality of education they receive while growing up. For most children in the United States, they get that education through the public school system. Primary and secondary education of some type is mandatory in the U.S. While some parents choose alternative methods of education, the majority of children will go through the public education system.
SARA ZAFAR
opinion@kansan.com
For this reason, the public education system is a very important part of the development of children and teenagers and should be an area of concern for the public as a whole. The children who process through the public education system are the people who will eventually run the country, and the quality of education they get is crucial to their development into intelligent and creative individuals. There is a delicate balance in place when considering a developing mind's requirements for a fulfilling education that teaches children to push the limits of their potential.
States such as Kansas have varying budgets for education, but none of them ranks near the top of the expenditures for each state. Renovations, athletics programs and improvement on standardized test scores are ranked much higher on the list of state concerns. Increasingly, the decrease in overall state budgets has led to a cut in education funds. Because of these budgetary adjustments, school boards must decide how to allocate these funds. School buildings are outdated and
in need of repair, and there are the usual expenditures such as bussing and teacher salaries. Something has to take the brunt of the decrease in funds, and often, the first programs to receive budgetary cuts are the arts, including music, theater, and visual art.
Already this attitude permeates the university level, where the arts and "soft" sciences, such as sociology and political science are under-funded compared to the hard, industry sciences. The closing of the anthropology museum at the University two years ago due to lack of funds, while the research sciences receive millions of dollars in grants and awards is indicative of a culture that favors the sciences.
While these "extracurricular" classes may seem expendable when compared to basic language, science and mathematic skills, those skills are worth little if a child has no understanding of what he or she is learning. According to the Americans for the Arts organization, exposure to music and understanding its basic forms is essential to a child's ability to form problem-solving skills and make creative solutions. Art classes also help strengthen the creativity centers of the brain, as well as allowing children to stretch their own creative limits.
Budget cuts force schools to hire teachers at a much lower salary, often resulting in teacher lay-offs because there simply is not enough money in the system. The quality education that is provided by a teacher who cares is one of the most memorable and impacting to a child. Also, as a result of fewer, more inexperienced teachers, class sizes increase and children get less individual attention. Individual attention is important in fostering confidence and security in children during their formative years.
The solution is to raise revenues for the education budget. The Kansas Board of Education statistics from 2000 showed that raising taxes is the usual solution, although a large part of the public objects to tax increases. However, tax revenues are the body of what funds most government programs. If today's children do not receive a full, balanced education, they will be less capable of dealing with large-scale problems in the future. Those opposed to a slight, but vital increase in taxation, which will ultimately lead to an increase in revenue for state education programs should take note of the fact that they will place their world into the hands of these children, and ask themselves if a few more dollars a year is worth it.
Sara Zafar is a Wichita senior in history.
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